Child abuse – Rewirehttps://rewire.news
News, commentary, analysis and investigative reporting on reproductive and sexual health, rights and justice issues.Tue, 26 Sep 2017 20:45:40 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2Bresha Meadows Will Spend One More Birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Away From Her Familyhttps://rewire.news/article/2017/05/22/bresha-meadows-will-spend-one-birthday-thanksgiving-christmas-away-family/
Mon, 22 May 2017 21:49:16 +0000https://rewire.news/?post_type=article&p=103430"She's extremely relieved," Bresha's attorney Ian Friedman told Rewire, noting that when he sat with her after the hearing, "it was the first time she showed optimism."

]]>On Monday, after nine months behind bars, Bresha Meadows appeared in court for her final pre-trial hearing. At 1:30 p.m, she entered a plea of “true,” the juvenile court equivalent of “guilty,” to reduced charges of involuntary manslaughter. She was sentenced to a year and a day in juvenile jail, plus six months in treatment and two years of probation. Her sentence includes the nine months Bresha has already served behind bars, meaning that she will spend 60 more days in detention before being sent to a juvenile treatment facility.

As Rewire previously reported, on July 28, 2016, Bresha, then age 14, was arrested on charges of killing her allegedly abusive father. Before her arrest, the teenager had run away to her aunt’s home twice. Each time, her father, Jonathan Meadows, called the police and accused his in-laws of kidnapping. After she returned home, according to her family members, the violence and abuse continued.

After her arrest, Bresha was sent to the Trumbull County Juvenile Detention Facility in Warren, Ohio, to await her day in court. In December, prosecutors announced that they would charge Bresha as a juvenile rather than an adult. That meant that, if convicted at trial, Bresha could have been held in juvenile detention until she turns 21.

In early May, defense attorney Ian Friedman announced that a possible plea was in the works. Under the terms of the original plea agreement, Bresha would have immediately spent the next nine months in the treatment facility. Her record would be sealed and, upon turning 21, expunged.

Under the terms of today’s plea, Bresha’s record will be sealed after three years and, in five years, expunged or totally erased. “She’s extremely relieved,” Friedman told Rewire, noting that when he sat with her after the hearing, it was the first time he’d seen her genuinely smiling. “It was the first time she showed optimism.”

Friedman himself says he is happy with the result, which is a long way from the initial charge of aggravated murder, the threat of being tried as an adult, and the possibility of life in prison. “Instead, she’ll be able to go home to her family in a matter of months,” he said.

Jonathan Meadows’ siblings were also in court on Monday. They continue to maintain that their brother was not abusive. His sister, Lena Cooper, publicly spoke out against a plea deal for her niece and, at sentencing, read a victim impact statement denying the abuse. However, the day before the hearing, Jonathan’s nephew came forward with stories of the violence and abuse he had suffered at the hands of his uncle 20 years earlier, stories that corroborate those of Bresha’s family.

Ja’Von Meadows-Harris moved in with Jonathan Meadows and his wife, Brandi, as a 6-year-old foster child. Bresha had not yet been born; her siblings were 1 and 2 years old. Ja’Von described years of continuous abuse, including physical harm, constant confinement to his room, and social isolation. He also recounted repeated instances in which Jonathan hit his wife. Once, late at night, he saw Jonathan hit Brandi while she was holding their newborn daughter Bresha.

“I don’t know what she said but it pissed him off and he hit her—he just backhanded her. He hit her so hard that she fell down,” he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. According to Ja’Von, Jonathan continued to punch Brandi as she curled up on the floor attempting to protect baby Bresha. When 12-year-old Ja’Von tried to intervene, he said, his uncle smacked him, sending him flying across the room. “He walked over to me and he grabbed me by my shirt and he said, ‘You ain’t never supposed to turn against me. I’m your family.'” Shortly after, a social worker removed him from the Meadows home. According to Ja’Von, now 27, he told her what he had endured, but no action was taken against his uncle.

On Monday, Bresha’s family and supporters packed the courtroom. “She could see us,” said Bresha’s aunt, Martina Latessa, in an interview with Rewire shortly after the sentencing, “but we didn’t get to hug her or have any contact.”

“She’ll have to do one more Thanksgiving and one more Christmas away,” Latessa told Rewire. Bresha will also spend her 16th birthday in confinement, but by then, says Latessa, she’ll be in the treatment facility that encourages family visits. There, Bresha will have access to mental health services unavailable at the detention center. She will also be allowed phone calls, her own clothes, and the ability to go outside. “We’ll be able to bring her a cake,” Latessa said.

In court, Friedman stated that the movement to free Bresha has helped keep her spirits up during her lengthy confinement and uncertainties about the future.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he told Rewire after the sentencing. The outpouring of support has also helped the family raise the money necessary for legal expenses and the cost of the treatment facility—which they’ll be responsible for, pointed out Mariame Kaba, who is part of the #FreeBresha campaign.

Noting that both Bresha and many family members are relieved at the sentence, Kaba told Rewire, “What’s important is how they’re feeling and how she’s feeling.”

But, she added, “the position of the #FreeBresha campaign is that plea deals are coercive and they’re a violent means of social control.”

The facility also retains the ability to increase the amount of time Bresha must stay if staff decide that she needs to continue treatment. The #FreeBresha campaign, then, will remain active.

]]>Can Understanding Neurobiology Provide a Better Approach to Working With Abuse Survivors?https://rewire.news/article/2017/01/05/can-understanding-neurobiology-provide-better-approach-working-abuse-survivors/
Thu, 05 Jan 2017 17:32:32 +0000https://rewire.news/?post_type=article&p=97346"It doesn't take much digging to see what's there is trauma, layers and layers of trauma," said Dr. Elizabeth Fitelson during the morning panel of Arresting Survival, a recent New York City conference focusing on domestic violence survivors.

Given the frequency of incidents, then, how can health-care professionals, advocates, and attorneys best work with domestic violence survivors? Some professors say that understanding neurobiology—how the nervous system processes and mediates behavior—can help them do so by connecting the dots between trauma, mental health, and domestic violence.

“It doesn’t take much digging to see what’s there is trauma, layers and layers of trauma,” said Dr. Elizabeth Fitelson during the morning panel of Arresting Survival, a recent New York City conference focusing on domestic violence survivors whose abuse led to their own arrest, prosecution, and punishment. “This is something that anyone working in the field of mental health should be aware of.”

Trauma is exposure to a distressing event, such as death or threatened death, actual or threatened injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence—all of which can be part and parcel of domestic abuse. According to the American Psychiatric Association, the exposure need not be experienced firsthand; trauma can also occur when a person witnesses a traumatic event, or learns that a traumatic event happened to a loved one or close friend.

And, as Fitelson noted at the conference, it can have lasting neurobiological consequences. “A 6-year-old exposed to trauma has a brain that looks different than [that of] a 6-year-old not exposed to trauma,” explained Fitelson, who is the co-founder and director of the Women’s Program at Columbia University Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry and the co-director of the Columbia Psychiatry Domestic Violence Initiative, which provides psychiatric care to domestic violence survivors at the Bronx Family Justice Center. But, she hastened to add that scientists are still examining the significance of that differing brain: “We don’t exactly know what that means.”

She also cautioned against the common misconception that biology is hard-wired and irreversible. “This is not the case,” she noted. “The true story of trauma is resiliency.”

Even so, trauma can have lasting consequences. For example, the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, which remains the largest study of short- and long-term effects of childhood trauma, found that those early experiences are powerful determinants of who a person becomes as an adult. From 1995 to 1997, researchers interviewed more than 17,000 people about their childhood experiences to examine the health and social effects of adverse childhood experiences over the span of a lifetime.

The study found that children whose trauma had never been addressed are much more vulnerable to being revictimized by rape or domestic violence. According to the ACE study, women who had four or more adverse childhood experiences are 500 percent more likely to become victims of domestic violence and almost 900 percent more likely to become victims of rape.

In addition, the risk of perpetrating domestic violence increases for both women and men who have experienced five or more adverse childhood experiences. In other words, the study confirms the adage, “Hurt people hurt people.”

Trauma, including that stemming from abuse and domestic violence, can also lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in which survivors re-experience trauma through flashbacks or recurring dreams. Those with PTSD experience a range of negative emotions, ranging from a persistent and distorted sense of self-blame, estrangement from others, or a significantly diminished interest in activities and an inability to remember important aspects of the traumatic event. Those who experience long-term trauma, such as people who are abused as children and later as adults, or people who experience sustained abuse and powerlessness, are at risk of developing complex PTSD. People with complex PTSD often experience difficulty managing their emotions—including anger—and may experience severe depression, suicidal thoughts, and a sense of hopelessness about the future.

Studies suggest that unresolved trauma can, in addition, trigger alcohol and drug use; involvement in violent activity; or other behaviors that may lead to arrest. A 2001 study by the U.S. Department of Justice found that experiencing childhood trauma increases the likelihood of being arrested as a juvenile by 59 percent, as an adult by 28 percent, and for a violent crime by 30 percent.

Without more data, however, more explicit links between the specific trauma of domestic violence and criminal justice involvement are unknown. As reported earlier in Rewire, no one seems to know how many domestic violence survivors are arrested and prosecuted for acts stemming from their abuse—only that, among women in prison, there is considerable overlap between domestic violence and incarceration. The most recent national data available remains a 1999 U.S. Department of Justice report stating that nearly half of women in local jails and state prisons had been abused prior to their arrest. In New York state, prison officials found in 2005 that 67 percent of women sent to prison for killing someone close to them had been abused by that person. Neither set of statistics include trans women being held in men’s jails or prisons. They also do not document or include survivors who have been coerced into other crimes, such as robbery, by abusive partners.

Furthermore, criminal justice systems themselves—as well as the courts, foster care, schools, law enforcement and health care—can become additional sources of violence for survivors. “We have a societal reaction of using law enforcement as a response to trauma rather than understanding incarceration as a form of trauma,” said Andrea Bible, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society, at the conference. In other words, she cautions that automatically calling the police when domestic violence occurs may lead not to safety, but to additional violence. Bible should know, having spent more than 14 years working with domestic violence survivors charged with or convicted of crimes stemming from their abuse. At the conference, she noted that every survivor she’s spoken with over the years has told her that violence and trauma is built into the jail itself.

“Think about what strip searches mean,” she said. “It’s a violation that people experience daily.” Upon release, survivors are not necessarily any safer from abusive ex-partners. She recounted working with one domestic violence survivor who was released from prison and into a program. Her ex found and assaulted her, threatening to burn the program down. Rather than working with her to safely transition to another program, the program expelled her as a potential risk. Bible was eventually able to get the woman into transitional housing affiliated with a domestic violence shelter, but until then, the survivor was on her own.

In general, understanding this landscape of trauma can improve approaches to working with survivors. Trauma-informed principles include acknowledgment, safety, trust, choice and control, compassion, collaboration, and a strengths-based focus. This means, experts say, approaching survivors in ways that take time and require empathy:

Ensure the survivor’s privacy. In other words, don’t expect to have the conversation in a room where people are coming and going.

Ask the person their name in a conversational manner and give them yours.

Don’t tell the person to “calm down” or “relax.” Instead, frame questions and statements with empathy.

Be sure to engage in active listening—keep your attention on them and maintain eye contact.

Rather than crossing your arms or putting your hands on your waist, keep your body language open, calm and relaxed. This can include smiling (when appropriate), expressing concern, and mirroring their body language.

Don’t tell them that they should feel a certain way. Instead, confirm and normalize the person’s feelings. So if a person recounts feeling confused after being assaulted by a loved one, say “Anyone would feel confused after being hit,” rather than “Why didn’t you leave after he hit you?”

Don’t be surprised if the explanation, or the order of events, changes. It is common for survivors of trauma to describe parts of their experience differently from one telling to the next, to talk about the sequence of events in random order rather than chronologically, to go off on tangents, or to have what’s known as a “flat affect” (speaking in a monotone and appearing to have little emotion). That’s because when the brain senses a threat, it releases hormones that cause the body to shut down in certain ways; this shutting down affects how and where memories of these events, as well as the person’s emotional responses, are stored. Later, these memories—as well as the survivor’s retelling—are more likely to be disjointed and out of sequence.

Provide the survivor with as much control as possible. Abuse leaves a person feeling powerless and out of control. If the person seems hesitant, ask questions and give them the time and space to answer. Understand that the person may need time to decide how they feel.

Focus on the person’s support system: Ask about family or friends, and help them decrease their sense of isolation.

Offer support regardless of the survivor’s decision. If the survivor chooses not to call the police or to stay in the relationship, don’t withdraw support or pressure them into a different decision. Instead, offer support to help them do so safely.

At the conference, Afua Addo, the women’s services coordinator at the Center for Court Innovation, said the effects of trauma may look different than what service providers may imagine. “Imagine a bear comes onto the stage,” she challenged the audience. Reactions would vary—many people would, hopefully, leap out of their chairs and run out of the auditorium. But some might freeze in place.

“If you freeze when encountering a bear, you’re perceived as having something wrong with you,” she noted. Similarly, attitudes toward domestic violence often follow the same line of blaming the victim for reacting to violence in certain ways—an approach that needs to change.

For safety and healing, Bible said, we should invest in community resources, rather than relying on law enforcement and a criminal justice system that may misinterpret or even worsen the consequences of abuse. “We need to reorient society towards preventing and healing from trauma,” she said.

Karen Gill is undergoing a long, arduous battle to protect her son after a Tennessee court six years ago affirmed a family court ruling to give Darryl Sawyer custody of their 6-and-a-half-year-old son, despite evidence presented by his ex-wife that he had allegedly sexually abused little Daniel.

Three years before the family court ruling, a pediatrician had confirmed Gill’s worst fears that the reddish-blue bruises on the child’s buttocks after a visit with his father occurred from an adult “holding his buttocks forcibly open.”

But William Bernet, a psychiatrist and court-appointed custody evaluator, convinced the judge to grant primary custody to Sawyer, “stating that Sawyer was not a pedophile or child molester and should be awarded custody of Daniel.” This, despite the medical evaluation and a Department of Children’s Services report indicating sexual abuse of their son.

A new report from the investigative news organization 100Reporters throws light on complaints of a parent sexually or physically abusing a child being routinely rejected at family courts around the country.

“Instead, perpetrators of abuse are often entrusted with unsupervised visits or joint or sole custody of the children they abuse, putting children in danger of serious, often life-threatening harm,” writes Laurie Udesky in the investigative report, titled “Custody in Crisis: How Family Courts Nationwide Put Children in Danger.” (The names of the family members were changed to protect the children’s privacy.)

Udesky is an associate of the G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, which worked with her to produce and report the story for 100Reporters.

The two-year investigation, which includes interviews with more than 30 parents and survivors in nine states, uncovered stories of children like Daniel who suffered years of abuse in fear and silence while the parents who sought to protect them were financially and psychologically drained.

“These parents have become increasingly stigmatized by a family court system that not only discounts evidence of abuse but accepts dubious theories used to undermine the protective parents’ credibility,” the report states.

News reports have indicated that 58 children between 2008 to 2016 were killed by custodial parents after family courts ignored abuse allegations by the protective parent, according to an analysis conducted by the California-based Center for Judicial Excellence, a watchdog group that focuses on family courts. “In all but six cases, protective parents were mothers who had warned family courts that their children were in danger from abusive fathers who later killed them,” the report notes.

The same amount of evidence in criminal court would result in convictions beyond a reasonable doubt, says attorney Richard Ducote, who represents concerned parents like Gill, in the report.

However, family courts have a different focus, according to Ducote. A former special assistant district attorney in Louisiana, Ducote says in the report that the courts usually try to keep families together although they are supposed to consider the best interest of the child first. “They’re concerned with the reduction of conflict and getting along, which is good unless there is someone you need to protect the child from,” he explains.

Sealed court records, intended to protect the privacy of children, can actually put children in greater danger by blocking outside oversight, the report notes.

The cost of litigation is also a huge deterrent for protective parents. Some 27 percent of 399 parents who ultimately declared bankruptcy spent about $100,000, according to the report.

With no state-by-state government data available,advocates estimate that at least 58,000 children a year end up in unsupervised visits with or in the custody of an abusive parent.

“A 2013 analysis in the Journal of Family Psychology cited studies that show that anywhere between 10 and 39 percent of abusers are awarded primary or shared custody of their children,” the report states.

“It’s a terrible situation,” Lynn Rosenthal says to Udesky. From 2009 to 2015, Rosenthal served as an adviser on violence against women in the White House. “The research shows that the family courts are a perfect place for abusers to get custody.”

Nashville-based Cynthia Cheatham, who represented Gill in her appeals case, agrees in the report that family courts can manipulate the evaluator, the guardian, and the judge to make themselves look good and todiscredit the concerned mother.

The investigation recommends reforming the nation’s family court system, where some advocacy groups have made headway. Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), for example, have introduced a resolution to recognize that “child safety is the first priority in custody and visitation adjudications.”

“Protective parents are asking the authorities to step in and protect their children and they’re not,” Kathleen Russell, executive director of the Center for Judicial Excellence, tells Udesky.

To be sure, the advocacy community holds widely divergent views on how to approach family court reform, which many see as inextricable from broader child welfare reform as a whole. Lillian Hewko, an attorney with the Incarcerated Parents Project, told Rewire in an email, “We need to work hard to find transformative justice strategies … that allow a community to respond to child sexual abuse in a manner that does not lead with prosecution, that creates real solutions.”

When possible abuse is identified, said Hewko, “we need options where a protective parent can insert a wrench into that cycle of abuse, where potential perpetrators can get help before they commit an act and work on their toxic shame that is leading them to often reenact their own trauma.”

Meanwhile, Rachel Ruttenberg, executive director of the Family Defense Center in Chicago—which seeks to “advocate justice for families in the child welfare system,” according to its website—said to Rewire that child protection systems inthe United States frequently remove children from parents as a first resort, not as a last—a claim that runs counter to the cases presented in the report.

Ruttenberg added that separation can result in too many children and families being traumatized, sometimes even as young as breastfeeding babies. Parents also lose custody of their children to state foster care systems due to poverty or because they are victims of abuse themselves.

Often fraught with emotions and agendas, child custody cases, especially those involving abuse, evoke a variety of strong opinions. The Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence, a nonprofit independent scientific organization, has outlined some of the myths that come into play to put children at risk during custody disputes. These range from allegations of abuse being rampant to the notion that good mothers usually win custody.

Dorothy Roberts, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Rewire, “I think the [“Custody in Crisis”] report shows that, despite the common assumption that judges always favor mothers in custody disputes, mothers are often devalued and silenced in both the private and public child welfare systems. I hope the report can be part of an effort to rid child welfare decision making of race, gender, and class biases, which systematically harm children and families.”

Meanwhile Gill and her son, now 13, are still seeking justice in Tennessee, this time in criminal court.

After Gill lost primary custody of Daniel, he reportedly broke down during a visit at the age of 8 and told her his father was sexually abusing him. Fed up with family court, Gill contacted the FBI, which conducted forensic interviews that led to a grand jury indictment of Sawyer on four counts of child rape and one count of sexual assault, the report notes.

Criminal court hearings have been postponed several times due to “scheduling conflicts,” according to the report. Daniel is now living with his mother; as long as Sawyer is free, Gill says that they will always “feel hunted, like we’re prey.”

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to clarify details about the different approaches being pushed by advocates to reform the child welfare system.

]]>Major League Baseball Has More Work to Do When It Comes to Domestic Violence Chargeshttps://rewire.news/article/2016/07/01/major-league-baseball-work-comes-domestic-violence-charges/
Fri, 01 Jul 2016 21:01:20 +0000http://rewire.news/?post_type=article&p=91527Major League Baseball's response to charges of domestic violence against Jose Reyes is really just a step in the right direction. The league, its fans, and the media outlets covering it have work to do before there is additional cause to celebrate.

]]>Two weeks ago, the Colorado Rockies Major League Baseball (MLB) team made headlines for designating their shortstop, Jose Reyes, for assignment. The designation for assignment (DFA) means he was removed from their roster, most likely so the Rockies could trade him or release him to the minors.

The decision came after an announcement from MLB in May concluding that Reyes had violated its new Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Child Abuse policy. Reyes was put on leave in February while the league investigated charges that he had allegedly assaulted his wife in a Hawaii hotel the previous October. Though the charges were ultimately dropped, MLB still concluded that he had violated its policy—which allows discipline no matter a case’s legal status—based on the available police reports. Ultimately, Reyes was suspended for 52 games.

Many sports fans and media outlets are celebrating the Rockies’ decision to designate Reyes for assignment, framing it squarely as a moral response to his domestic violence suspension. As a result of the suspension, Reyes ultimately lost a total of $7.02 million for missing 30 percent of the season and is required to donate $100,000 to “charity focused on domestic violence.” Still, the team will owe Reyes $41 million despite the DFA—and that, spectators say, makes the Rockies’ actions worthy of praise. The Denver Post‘s Mark Kiszla, for example, wrote that the Rockies‘ franchise owner, Dick Monfort, deserves a “standing ovation” for taking a “$40M stance against domestic violence” that was “not just financial.” According to Kiszla, “the franchise did right by battered women by showing zero tolerance for physical abuse.”

The league could have acted faster and given Reyes a longer, more consequential suspension to show its seriousness in responding to his violation of the policy. In fact, the New York Mets’ recent signing of Reyes, which the team explained as giving him a “second chance,” underscores just how much tolerance for reports of domestic violence truly exists in professional baseball as a whole.

Even so, while the Rockies’ consideration of Reyes’ charges of domestic abuse in their decision should be appreciated, the DFA should be understood for what it really appears to be overall: based on the team’s response, it was a business decision, not an action on behalf of domestic violence survivors.

“Would we be sitting here talking about this if the domestic violence thing hadn’t happened in Hawaii? We wouldn’t. So it’s obviously part of the overall decision,” said Colorado general manager Jeff Bridich told the New York Times. After all, an incident causing a player to miss a third of the season is enough to make any team pause for consideration.But, as the Times pointed out, there are other reasons that the Rockies were ready to move on, including “never really wanting him in the first place,” the great performance of his replacement during the suspension, and the fact that the franchise had already sunk the costs of bringing Reyes onboard. By the terms of their contract, designating him for assignment was no more expensive than keeping him.

Furthermore, the handling of the Reyes case within the league and the franchise has been mostly professional, but there is still a lingering tone of undue apology toward Reyes—suggesting, again, that the treatment he has received may not be the unilateral condemnation of domestic violence that others have implied.

It begins with Reyes himself, who first apologized “to the Rockies organization, my teammates, all the fans, and most of all my family,” before retweeting Mike Cameron, a former MLB player who said that Reyes just had a “bad moment in life” and deserved forgiveness for committing physical violence against his wife.

Commissioner Manfred walked a thin line in a news conference in November just after the Hawaii incident, stating his interest in maintaining Reyes’ privacy despite the charges against him. “There’s a balance there,” he said. “On the one hand, I think our fans want to know that the case has been dealt with appropriately. On the other hand, whoever the player is, the fact that he’s a major league player doesn’t mean he has absolutely no right to privacy and or that everything in the context of a relationship or a marriage has to be public.”

While domestic violence can happen “behind closed doors,” that does not mean it is an issue of one’s personal privacy. As Bethany P. Withers has argued for the New York Times, there may not be public witnesses to abuse occurring between partners, but we should not ignore professional athletes who are charged with committing acts of domestic violence. Manfred’s comments, as well as Cameron’s, minimize Reyes’ Hawaii incident into “a lovers’ quarrel,” rather than a report of an abusive act of behavior that most likely exposes an ongoing pattern.

Rockies Franchise owner Dick Monfort’s comments were better, though not ideal. In April he told the Associated Press, “I’d like to know exactly what happened. It’s easy for us all to speculate on what happened. But really, until you really know, it’s hard. You’re dealing with a guy’s life, too.” Monfort, while expressing understandable concern for this player, sounds apologetic to Reyes, rather than the woman he was charged with abusing.

Sympathizing with Reyes in this matter, while he may be sorry for reportedly committing actions that had visible consequences, centers the experience of an abuser in a culture that silences, blames, shames, and erases survivors of domestic violence and perpetuates abusive behavior.

Much of the media, meanwhile, has taken action either to diminish Reyes’ alleged crimes or dismiss them completely. The Post‘s Kiszla, for example, was plain encouraging of Reyes, for whom he “hoped nothing but the best, if his wife had forgiven him.” His uninformed commentary shows utter lack of understanding of domestic violence and what Katherine Reyes might be experiencing in deciding to “not cooperate with the prosecutors” on the case. Fox News was similarly insensitive. At the very least, the media can provide a short explanation as to what domestic violence is and why victims may be reluctant to work with police and the criminal justice system in the first place. The “inaction, hostility, and bias” they might face, as the American Civil Liberties Union put it, is real. And their personal fear of consequences are legitimate.

Nightengale of USA Today had a particularly awful response, explicitly sympathizing with Reyes, saying “that one ugly night in Hawaii cost Reyes his pride and his job.” Except that domestic violence, a cycle of power and control, is hardly ever just “one ugly night.”

Furthermore, incidents of reported domestic violence need to be named as such. In the coverage of Reyes’ charges in Hawaii, the media failed to do so. Though ESPN reported Reyes had been arrested on abuse charges, it still said Reyes had “an argument with his wife [that] turned physical.” The Chicago Tribune labeled it as “an altercation.” The Tribune was also inaccurate in reporting that Reyes ‘choked’ his wife, when the it was actually strangulation. Technically, choking by definition is when the airway is blocked internally. Strangulation, however, is the act of blocking the passage of air through the external use of force. While the difference is subtle—in fact, the police report itself logged the action as “choking”—the ramifications are large. Describing the act as an expression of dominance signals to the public that acts of violence have perpetrators. It also gives detailed meaning to “domestic violence,” an all-encompassing phrase whose intricacies are not widely understood.

While it may seem petty to be picking over semantics, accurate framing is the difference between two partners having a disagreement and one partner committing threatening acts of violence against another in a cyclical power dynamic. It’s the difference between public acceptance of horrific behavior and public recognition of unhealthy, unacceptable relationship dynamics.

The focus on costs to Reyes and the Rockies should also be reframed. If we really want to talk big money, we should consider the exorbitant shared cost of domestic violence on all of our systems, both public and private. Domestic violence is “a serious, preventable public health problem.” The epidemic is estimated to cost $8.3 billion annually to the economy due to its effect on survivors’ physical and emotional health, as well as their workplace productivity. Because domestic violence is so widely underreported, this estimate is even a conservative one. It also does not encompass the cost to child survivors and the trauma inherited by future generations. Understanding the ridiculously high costs of domestic violence centers the long-lasting effects of an epidemic on survivors and our society as a whole, rather than the cost to a singular MLB player or team.

Though the new MLB policy appears to be comprehensive and informed by experts, the league, the teams, and the media haven’t quite perfected their responses. With regard to MLB’s process and ultimate decision, critics are saying the league should act faster and make longer, more consequential suspensions in the future. If Commissioner Manfred is really going to give weight to charges of domestic violence, a quicker, more punitive response to charges like Reyes’ is a good way to start. There is also significant work to be done in the public relations and media responses to domestic violence in the League overall.

]]>For-Profit Texas Prisons Could Reduce Standards for Holding Childrenhttps://rewire.news/article/2016/02/16/profit-texas-prisons-reduce-standards-holding-children/
https://rewire.news/article/2016/02/16/profit-texas-prisons-reduce-standards-holding-children/#respondTue, 16 Feb 2016 16:27:33 +0000http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=74183The reason family detention centers must become licensed child-care facilities in order to continue operating is a fight that originated in Texas.

]]>The Texas Health and Human Services Commission approved a proposed rule Friday to reduce child-care standards, permitting two for-profit detention centers detaining hundreds of children in the state to move forward with the licensing process.

Grassroots Leadership, the Texas-based organization that won a temporary injunction in November in its suit to stop the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) from licensing Karnes County Residential Center and Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center as child-care facilities under an emergency rule, said in a press release that Friday’s ruling could set a dangerous precedent.

The emergency rule would have eliminated minimum child safety standards applicable to all child-care facilities in Texas. Because Grassroots Leadership received the temporary injunction, Karnes and Dilley were forced to go through the traditional licensing procedure, which enabled immigrant rights organizers, child welfare advocates, academic researchers, and immigrant families released from detention centers to attend December’s public hearing at DFPS and comment on the proposal to license the family detention centers as child-care facilities.

An open records request obtained by Grassroots Leadership found that DFPS received more than 5,000 pages filled with comments, letters, emails, and testimony that were “overwhelmingly against” adopting the proposed rule.

The department’s decision came on the heels of Pennsylvania, the only other state in the country with family detention centers, issuing notice on January 25 that the licensing of the Berks County Family Residential Center would not be renewed and would officially be revoked, ending family detention in the state. The facility has appealed the decision.

Texas officials decided to move forward with this new licensing process that lowers the standards for child-care facilities in detention centers, Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, told Rewire.

“This is about ensuring that family detention can continue in the wake of the Flores ruling,” Libal said. “The agency essentially admitted that this is part of immigration enforcement, and not about child welfare.”

The Flores v. Meeseagreement states that children should not be held in unlicensed facilities.

The reason family detention centers must become licensed child-care facilities in order to continue operating is also a fight that originated in Texas.

Judge Dolly M. Gee ordered in July that migrant children be released from family detention centers, as Rewire reported. Judge Gee said migrant children had been held in “widespread deplorable conditions” in Texas Border Patrol stations and that authorities had “wholly failed” to provide the “safe and sanitary” conditions required for children even in temporary cells.

These conditions were in violation of the Floresagreement. Texas’ DFPS in September began trying to keep the detention facilities open to house women and children by creating a new child-care licensing category for family detention centers. Friday’s ruling means that on March 1, the family detention centers can apply for licensing. Hearings will be held based on the facilities’ applications, allowing the public to weigh in again.

Libal said DFPS ignored the testimony from child welfare experts and has chosen to move ahead “simply in order to bolster this harsh immigration detention policy and allow private prison corporations that are reliant on immigration detention contracts, including the ones at Karnes and Dilley, to continue to profit.”

Libal is referring to companies like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a for-profit, private prison company with a history of allegations of human rights abuses in its prisons and detention facilities, including claims of child abuse. CCA runs Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center.

“If you look at the recent CCA’s shareholder call, it is very clear that any profits from 2014 and 2015 were due to Dilley. For me, the ruling moving us closer to seeing these prisons licensed as child-care facilities wasn’t necessarily surprising, but it is shameful that the agency has abdicated on its responsibilities to children in Texas in the pursuit of a harsh immigration enforcement policy,” Libal said.

CCA officials, in the company’s annual letter to shareholders in 2014, confirmed that facilities like Dilley were “key drivers” in the company’s “growth in operating margin and operating income,” emphasizing that they were selected by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to design, build, and operate Dilley, one of the largest facilities in the nation developed for ICE.

“When it comes to family detention, this fight is far from over at both the state and federal level,” Libal said. “At the Democratic debate last week, both Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders said they would end family detention. For me, this is about what the Obama Administration’s legacy will be and about what the next president will inherit, which is the largest trend in family detention since interment. I certainly hope President Obama will choose to end family detention before leaving office.”

]]>A Tennessee woman who was one of the first to be charged under the state’s controversial fetal assault law accepted a plea deal that will keep her out of jail but on probation for almost a year.

Brittany Nicole Hudson pleaded guilty to child abuse, or simple assault, stemming from an incident in October 2014 where Hudson allegedly gave birth to a baby girl in a car on the side of a Blount County, Tennessee road. The Blount County Sheriff’s Office then opened an investigation and determined that Hudson had used illicit drugs during her pregnancy.

SB 1391 allows a person to be prosecuted for the illegal use of a narcotic while pregnant, if the baby is born addicted to or harmed by the narcotic drug, and the addiction or harm is a result of illegal use of a narcotic drug taken while pregnant.

“It is very easy to mistake a plea deal that keeps someone from spending time behind bars with a victory,” Farah Diaz-Tello, senior staff attorney at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told Rewire in an email. “Ms. Hudson and her attorney made the choice that was best for her under the circumstances, but we need to read between the lines [and] look more closely at the circumstances—including the fact that she gave birth in a car on the side of the road—and … what probation really means.”

Hudson’s baby reportedly showed signs of being affected by drugs at birth, which prompted authorities to place the baby in the University of Tennessee Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit, where the child was weaned off opiates.

Tennessee passed its fetal assault law in response to what public health officials decried as a rash of births of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome [NAS], a temporary, treatable condition that can occur if a person takes opiates during pregnancy. As Diaz-Tello explained, the law effectively criminalizes an entire population: pregnant people.

“First of all, she [Hudson] pleaded guilty to something that is not a crime: Tennessee’s notoriously failed law makes giving birth to a baby with NAS simple assault, not child abuse,” said Diaz-Tello. “This tells me that she saw the odds so stacked against her that pleading guilty to a non-existent crime of ‘fetal child abuse’ and putting her name on a record of child abusers that will affect her employability and child custody for possibly decades seemed like the better choice than fighting the charge.”

Hudson received two sentences of 11 months and 29 days of supervised probation under the plea deal, according to reports. But Diaz-Tello said that even probation is a poor outcome for people who are facing a fetal assault charge.

“Then there is the fact that probation means 11 months and 29 days of living under the microscope of correctional control. Probation is not designed for people to be successful and whole, it is designed for them to be quasi-prisoners,” Diaz-Tello said. “I’m happy for every woman who manages to keep out of jail, but it’s cold comfort: health-care issues should never be under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system in the first place.”

A woman who helped Hudson deliver her baby, Bailey McCay Propst, was reportedly also charged with child abuse and providing false information to police after the birth of the child. Officials eventually dropped the child abuse charge against Propst and she later pleaded guilty and was placed on probation for the charge of providing false information to a police officer.

The Tennessee law is set to expire July 1, 2016 unless lawmakers renew the measure.

]]>https://rewire.news/article/2016/02/10/tennessee-woman-takes-plea-deal-states-fetal-assault-law/feed/0Lawsuit: Kentucky Sheriff Shackled Students With Disabilitieshttps://rewire.news/article/2015/08/03/lawsuit-kentucky-sheriff-shackled-students-disabilities/
https://rewire.news/article/2015/08/03/lawsuit-kentucky-sheriff-shackled-students-disabilities/#respondMon, 03 Aug 2015 21:35:36 +0000http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=62887A federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of two children accuses a Kentucky sheriff of shackling students with disabilities for misbehaving.

]]>A deputy sheriff in Kentucky shackled two elementary school children who have disabilities for misbehaving, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the children.

The children, an 8-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, were so small that Kenton County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Sumner locked the handcuffs around the children’s biceps and forced their hands behind their backs, the lawsuit charges. Sumner works as a school resource officer in Covington, Kentucky.

The lawsuit seeks an order requiring a change in policies by the Kenton County Sheriff’s Office, and additional training for school resource officers in dealing with young children and children with special needs. It also seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages against Sumner.

“Shackling children is not okay,” Susan Mizner, disability counsel for the ACLU, said in a statement following the filing of the lawsuit. “It is traumatizing, and in this case it is also illegal.”

The lawsuit also names Kenton County Sheriff Chuck Korzenborn as a defendant, alleging he failed to adequately train and supervise Sumner, who serves as an officer at several public elementary schools in Covington. The complaint further claims that the Kenton County Sheriff’s Office violated the Americans with Disabilities Act based on its treatment of the children.

“Kentucky’s school personnel are prohibited from using restraints, especially mechanical restraints, to punish children or as a way to force behavior compliance,” said Kim Tandy, executive director of the Children’s Law Center. “These regulations include school resource officers. These are not situations where law enforcement action was necessary.”

A video released by the ACLU accompanying the lawsuit shows the boy, S.R., being shackled and crying out in pain. Attorneys representing the child said that S.R. has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a history of trauma. The girl, L.G., was twice handcuffed behind her back by her biceps, also causing her pain, the attorneys allege.

L.G. has ADHD and other special needs and the ACLU claims both children were being punished for behavior related to their disabilities. Neither was arrested nor charged with any criminal conduct.

“Using law enforcement to discipline students with disabilities only serves to traumatize children,” Mizner said. “It makes behavioral issues worse and interferes with the school’s role in developing appropriate educational and behavioral plans for them.”

Students with disabilities make up 12 percent of the national student population, but are 75 percent of the students who are physically restrained by adults in their schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education. These disciplinary practices feed into the “school-to-prison pipeline,” where children are funneled out of public schools and into the criminal justice system, advocates charge.

Students of color and students with disabilities are especially vulnerable to such push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline. One child in this case is Latino, and the other is Black.

“It is heartbreaking to watch my little boy suffer because of this experience,” S.R.’s mother said in a statement. “It’s hard for him to sleep, he has anxiety, and he is scared of seeing the officer in the school.”

]]>https://rewire.news/article/2015/08/03/lawsuit-kentucky-sheriff-shackled-students-disabilities/feed/0Post-Sandusky Child Abuse Reform Bills Finally Expected to Move in Pennsylvania (Updated)https://rewire.news/article/2013/12/10/post-sandusky-child-abuse-reform-bills-finally-expected-to-move-in-pennsylvania/
https://rewire.news/article/2013/12/10/post-sandusky-child-abuse-reform-bills-finally-expected-to-move-in-pennsylvania/#respondTue, 10 Dec 2013 15:23:29 +0000http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=29473If HB 726—the bill designed to redefine child abuse in Pennsylvania—is signed, it will be the first of more than a dozen bills expected to be signed into law that came out of the evaluation following the arrest of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted of 45 charges of abusing ten boys.

UPDATE, December 18, 2:50 p.m.: Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett signed HB 726, and nine related bills, Wednesday morning. Gov. Corbett said in a statement, “Enacting stronger child protection laws is one of those important moments when we come together and stand up for those who have suffered in silence and ensure that justice is served.”

Last summer, Sandusky was convicted of 45 charges of abusing ten boys, and the failures of Pennsylvania law were in the spotlight once again.

An analysis conducted by the Patriot-News following the verdicts concluded that the state’s child abuse laws have not been significantly updated since the 1970s. The situation was so bad that for years, Pennsylvania was the only state in the country not in compliance with federal child abuse laws. Pennsylvania was also the last state to allow young victims of abuse to testify against their abusers via video conference and to allow expert witnesses to educate juries about typical victim behavior, such as delayed reporting of abuse.

The most significant of many failures of law, though, has been the state’s narrow definition of child abuse. Under current law, advocates and legislators say, physical attacks have to result in “severe pain,” or impairment of a major bodily function or disfigurement to be classified as child abuse.

“If you intentionally took a cigarette and burned a child, that would not be child abuse [under current law],” said Rep. Scott Petri (R-Bucks), sponsor of HB 726, the bill designed to redefine child abuse in Pennsylvania.

“If you locked a child in a closet for a long period of time, that would not be child abuse because it doesn’t meet the threshold. If you have the means to feed a child, but you choose not to feed them for a substantial period of time, that is not child abuse currently,” said Petri. “All of those items would be child abuse under the new definition.”

Petri says his bill draws a “bright line” between corporal punishment and child abuse. It also contains “per se” provisions that will automatically classify sexual assault as child abuse.

Petri adds that while researching problems with current law, he spoke with pediatricians who told him that they would see the same child come to their office with broken bones and suspect abuse, but an investigation would find the report unsubstantiated. After a while, they wouldn’t report their suspicions, expecting nothing would happen.

The data supports such anecdotes. Pennsylvania has long been a “statistical outlier” in the investigation and determination of child abuse, consistently ranking lowest in the country in substantiated child abuse rates. In 2010, the substantiation rate was 1.3 per 1,000 children, while the national average was 9.2 per 1,000 children, according to the Protect Our Children Committee (POCC), a state advocacy organization.

As such, HB 726 is the bedrock of a package intended to make “sweeping” changes to Pennsylvania law. He says the governor is “anxious” to receive his bill, and expects it to be signed before year’s end.

If it is signed, it will be the first of more than a dozen bills expected to be signed into law that came out of the post-Sandusky evaluation.

The implementation date, however, is December 31, 2014. The delay concerns advocates like Cathleen Palm, longtime child advocate and co-founder of POCC.

“Are we on course for a bit of chaos?” asked Palm. “If you start to train people on the reporting provisions, and reinforce you have a responsibility to report, isn’t the definition part of how you teach people to report?”

“We want to make sure we need to give all the children and youth workers time to be educated in the bill,” Petri told Rewire.

An associated bill will update which perpetrators will be classified as child abusers in Pennsylvania. (Previously, a criminal conviction did not necessarily mean classification and inclusion in the state database.)

Sara Ganim, the reporter who broke the Penn State story, noted that under old state law—that is, current Pennsylvania law, until the new legislation is implemented—even Jerry Sandusky would not necessarily be classified as a child abuser.

Rep. Petri echoes advocates when he says that the need for child abuse law reform has been obvious for many years, but it took the publicity from the Sandusky case to force attention on the issue.

The neglect may seem out-of-place in a state with so-called conservative, family-values run by a “pro-life” governor, but Petri says it reflects some of the deeply ingrained biases held by the (mostly male, white, and relatively affluent) lawmakers in Harrisburg.

“I will tell you that in the early years, when I would bring it up with some of my colleagues, you would get a response like, ‘That only happens in places like Philadelphia,’” he said.

ChildLine, Pennsylvania’s child abuse hotline, received an all-time high of 26,664 calls reporting suspected child abuse in 2012, with substantiated claims coming in from all 67 counties, according to a state report. Sexual abuse was involved in 54 percent of all substantiated claims.

]]>https://rewire.news/article/2013/12/10/post-sandusky-child-abuse-reform-bills-finally-expected-to-move-in-pennsylvania/feed/0Oklahoma Passes Harsh Parental Consent Bill, While Louisiana Teens Can Turn Parents in for Abusehttps://rewire.news/article/2013/05/15/oklahoma-passes-harsh-parental-consent-bill-while-louisiana-teens-can-turn-parents-in-for-abuse/
https://rewire.news/article/2013/05/15/oklahoma-passes-harsh-parental-consent-bill-while-louisiana-teens-can-turn-parents-in-for-abuse/#respondWed, 15 May 2013 21:31:41 +0000http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=19422Oklahoma's governor has signed into law a bill that will make getting an abortion much more difficult for teens, while in Louisiana a new bill would make it possible to charge parents with child abuse for "coercing" daughters into abortion.

]]>Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Mary Fallin has signed into law a bill that will make accessing an abortion much more difficult for teens, even with parental consent. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, a new bill would make it possible to charge parents with child abuse for trying to “coerce” daughters out of carrying pregnancies to term.

Fallin’s signature on HB 1361 wasn’t much in doubt, based on the governor’s past support of abortion restrictions. Minors seeking an abortion in the state now must have the consent of a parent or guardian who has a valid ID and provides a signing, notarized consent form, or the minors may seek a judicial bypass, but the bill stipulates that they can only do so in the county in which they reside. If the judge in that county will not authorize the bypass, teens are left with no safe, legal option.

In Louisiana, lawmakers are considering making it a crime to “coerce” a teen into an abortion, defining such coercion as child abuse. The bill also expands the definition of coercion to include threats of “deprivation of food and shelter.”

The addition of “threats of deprivation” is reminiscent of the February case of a pregnant Texas teen whose parents were accused of trying to coerce her into an abortion by taking away her cell phone and car until she agreed to terminate the pregnancy. The teen testified that they attempted to “make her miserable so that she would give in to the coercion and have the abortion.” The parents denied the allegations, but a judge ruled that the parents must return the car to allow her to get to work and school and pay half of the hospital bills when she gave birth unless she got married in the following months.

While most people would agree that no one, including parents, should threaten a teen into an unwanted abortion, the new language could set the stage for more court challenges in which parents and their children are pitted against each other amid disagreements about what constitutes “threat of deprivation.” Meanwhile, just a short ways away in Oklahoma, a parent who wants to support the decision of a teen who wants an abortion will find it increasingly difficult to do so.

]]>https://rewire.news/article/2013/05/15/oklahoma-passes-harsh-parental-consent-bill-while-louisiana-teens-can-turn-parents-in-for-abuse/feed/0Spanking Your Child: The World Disagreeshttps://rewire.news/article/2012/06/11/spanking-your-child-not-something-people-agree-with-worldwide/
Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:51:32 +0000Every single country in the world except for the United States and Somalia, have agreed that spanking is wrong, at least in principle.

]]>Opinion pieces for and against corporal punishment of children cycle around with tremendous regularity. Most are based on absolutely no data, and merely offer some variation on the theme of “I was (or I wasn’t) spanked as a child, and look how well I turned out.”

Many articles inexplicably extrapolate from these hyper-personal narratives to conclude not only that “what’s good enough for me is good enough for my children,” but moreover that whatever the other camp is proposing (to spank or not to spank) is inherently bad for the child with no reference to statistics or science. Most recently, a proponent of spanking argued that not to spank your child teaches her or him that “if life isn’t fair, then throw a fit and you’ll eventually get your way.”

Full disclosure: my parents did not hit or spank me and I have never thought it necessary, desirable, or expedient to hit or spank my child. I know for a fact that she is absolutely clear that throwing a fit won’t get her anywhere. And I also know for a fact that these personal experiences cannot be translated into a theory of child psychology for larger gain.

Instead, let me try to overcome some of the dearth of information on this topic, from the perspective of desired objectives and actual outcomes.

First of all, it might come as a surprise for readers in the United States that many countries have outlawed all forms of corporal punishment of children, including spanking, slapping, other forms of hitting, as well as kicking and shaking. Countries with full bans on corporal punishment include Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, as well as Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, South Sudan, and Ukraine. (For a full list, see here).

Sweden was the first country to pass a ban on corporal punishment in 1979, and quite aside from impressive child health and education indicators, it is clear that the country has not descended into anarchy as a result of this “lack of discipline.” It is noteworthy that Sweden’s standard of living has been described by economists as “enviable,” fuelled by a “skilled labor force” (including a substantial number of workers born after the absolute spanking ban). Moreover, the economic downturn that is engulfing all of Europe is projected to be relatively short-lived in Sweden. In other words: either it pays off to be throwing fits, or else the ban on spanking does not really produce lazy, fit-throwing adults after all.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that there is any direct causal link between bans on corporal punishment and a country’s economy. I am, however, suggesting that hitting children (whatever you choose to call it) is not something most people agree with. And not because I wasn’t spanked myself. Rather, every single country in the world except for the United States and Somalia, have agreed that spanking is wrong, at least in principle, through ratifying the universal treaty on children’s human rights, the Convention on the Rights of Child. (South Sudan also has not ratified this treaty, but banned corporal punishment of children in 2011).

In other words, the vast majority of the world’s seven billion individuals live in countries that have, in principle, signed and ratified commitments to end violence against children in all its form, including corporal punishment in the home.

To be sure, the fact that governments from all over the world have come together to declare that spanking must stop is not going to convince those who believe in spanking as an effective method of discipline that, in fact, it is not.

To this there is only one thing to say: they are wrong.

It is a generally accepted notion that positive reinforcement brings about more lasting behavioral change than punishment both when it comes to animals and when it comes to people. A recent article in The Atlantic notes that theories on how to modify behavior through positive reinforcement form the backbone of successful programs such as Weight Watchers and AA, and provide the underlying structure of newer behavior modification applications for smart phones and computers.

Indeed, observing children around me, it seems likely that what might produce “lazy fit-throwing” adults is not lack of corporal punishment but rather lack of clarity with regard to what constitutes acceptable behaviour in the first place. There are any number of ways to communicate this clarity, and violence—including spanking—is not one of them. Consistent quality education at home and at school would be a better place to start.